source of profit. As for the land, we sow it in a rotation of crops: firstly, we sow wheat in the autumn, on which we sow in March a crop of clover to follow the harvest, then in late autumn we sow barley; after the barley is reaped, in the following summer, you should let the land rest a year before you sow with wheat again in October. (This fallacy of fallow lands still obtains among the lower class in France, though the agricultural schools have taught the well-to-do farmer to exact a harvest every year from land enriched with chemical manures, or refreshed by an occasional crop of clover, vetch or buckwheat, ploughed into the soil while green, between harvest and autumn seed-time. But, to resume.) The clover is for the cows. Here they do not live in the fields as in Auvergne, but chiefly in the stables. In the summer we feed them three times a day with beet-root or turnip-tops, cabbage, and clover; in the winter we make a good soup of wheat-chaff, bran, beetroots, and a sort of oil-cake made from the crushed pulp of the walnuts left in the oil-press; boiling water is poured on this, it is left to ferment for two hours; and then, just slightly warm, it is given to the cows in the stable. They have this soup twice a day, and the rest of the time we give them something every two hours or so, generally a mangerful of dried clover, cabbage-leaves and chopped straw.” There is no hay, you observe, in this substantial diet. Nor does she speak of the large yellow pumpkins which, in the greater part of Touraine, are so useful a food both for man and beast. At the Commanderie, the cattle graze the pastures in summer; in winter they are fed on hay, chopped straw, beetroot soup, or potatoes, boiled Jerusalem artichokes, mangel-wurzel and swedes, made into a warm pottage. How our neighbours at Olmet would stare if I suggested a _purée_ of vegetables for the cows! A large family is a source of wealth to the farmer, who has to pay five pounds a year to his herdboy or goose-girl, ten or twelve pounds a year to the maid who helps his wife, and sixteen pounds a year to every labourer and ploughman, in addition to their keep. So when the farmer really _is_ a farmer and cultivates his neighbour’s land, his quiver is well plenished, as in Auvergne. But in Touraine the peasant works on his own land; and the dread of having to divide that treasured morsel, dearer than wife or child, sorely limits his descendants. A law permitting a greater freedom in the making of wills would certainly be followed by an immediate increase in the rural population. The French as a nation are lovers of children and hoarders of money. Who would not multiply the curly heads around the bowl of cabbage-soup, and save by the same stroke the money spent in wages?